Solving the SEND crisis: Contact’s analysis

5 mins read

Thursday 18 September 2025

Tags: special educational needs, schools, disabled children, education select committee, children and young people


Today the Education Select Committee has published a report from its inquiry, Solving the SEND crisis. We welcome this detailed report which puts families at its heart.

It comes after the committee carried out evidence sessions with parent groups, charities and professionals with experience of the SEND system. This included Imogen Steele, Contact’s SEN policy lead, who spoke about what we hear on Contact’s helpline from families: the importance of retaining existing legal rights to support for children with special educational needs, the importance of improving the SEN support system to help children early before needs escalate, the need for improved accountability and the importance of school transport.

We are delighted that the committee recognises that SEND reforms must not be based on any withdrawal of statutory entitlements for children and young people. In addition the report recommends the following, which are in line with our SEN support, accountability and school transport asks:

SEN support

  • the Department for Education should publish a unified national framework for ordinarily available provision and SEN support.

The committee recommends that there should be statutory requirements setting out a baseline of ordinarily available and SEN support that can be accessed in all schools. This would include resources, specialist expertise, and equipment. We welcome this as it should make it easier to seek redress if SEN Support is not being delivered. However we would like it to go a step further by making the graduated approach of assess do plan and review, a statutory requirement, as we call for in our 3 asks.

Accountability

  • the Government must extend the powers of the Local Government Ombudsman to cover complaints about the delivery of EHC plans, SEN support and other appropriate inclusive education for children with SEND in schools, multi-academy trusts and other education settings.
  • Ofsted should take into account a school’s inclusion practice as part of its inspections and for there to be mandatory SEND training for Ofsted inspectors.
  • Local Authority staff should receive improved training on SEND law.

We welcome the addition of these recommendations, which families tell us are important steps to help them rebuilt trust in the system and we had identified in our accountability briefing paper.

School transport

  • Statutory transport provision should be guaranteed based on clear criteria such as distance from education settings, level of need, and other relevant factors to ensure no young person is unfairly disadvantaged. 
  • Review home to school transport and identify costs across regions.

We support the provision of transport for all ages based on a clear criteria providing this does not exclude more disabled students from the transport they need with particular consideration of the impact on families. We agree that no young person should be unfairly disadvantaged by their journey to school or college and the transport available to them. We welcome the committee’s recognition of the particular issue of transport for 16-19 year olds and were delighted their report refers to Contact’s research on the impact of losing transport when a child turns 16 for no other reason apart from their age.

We welcome further investigation into costs and funding of home to school transport. Developing local and inclusive education capacity is a long-term project, but the current funding crisis needs to be urgently addressed so that there can be adequate transport provision for disabled children and young people. We agree that regional data will be important – but the aim must be to lead to efficiencies in provision without decreasing availability or quality of service. It must not lower the bar to match costs. We support Independent Travel Training where appropriate but caution that families say it is not always a viable option for their young people.

Health

  • The departments for Health, Education and Social Care should work more closely together.
  • Powers of the SEND Tribunal should be extended to allow it to issue binding recommendations to health services, not just education providers.
  • The DfE and DHSC should urgently develop a joint SEND workforce plan to address shortages and build capacity across education, health, and care services.

The committee’s recommendation for the Departments of Education, Health and Social Care to work more closely is vital to ensure the SEND system works. If a child’s needs are unsupported at home, life is much harder for their family, caring 24/7, and it has a knock-on effect in the classroom too. Health and social care are key parts of the puzzle for solving the SEND crisis.

We welcome the recommendation to extend the power of the SEND Tribunal to cover health. This is one of our health asks. If health support is specified in an Education, Health and Care plan, health bodies would be legally obligated to provide it and there would be clear consequences for non-compliance. Families have told us the importance of this to them.